Friday, October 29, 2010

Costumes, Pumkins, Felting... and Knitting

I realise that I have neglected this blog again... Time to catch up. First I have been knitting a really wonderful Vogue Knitting coat. It is from the Early Fall 2010 issue, and is number 1, long cardigan. I am knitting it with Debbie Bliss Donegal Chunky Tweed in a natural brown colour 292113. This pattern is very chunky and knits quite quickly. The changes I am making (and you know I never make things EXACTLY as the pattern describes) I am patterning the back in the same cable pattern as the front (the back originally has BIG loose cables in the center - not my favourite). And I am making the sleeve length to my wrist instead of the three quarter length. This means casting on 8 less stitches and adding the increases evenly along the sleeve until the same upper sleeve width has been reached (yes, it is a bit of math, but not too hard to see why that works) You need the wrist to be a bit narrower than the mid arm starting width.


The top photo shows the colour the best, the bottom (without the flash) shows the stitch detail better.




The other thing that has consumed my time in the last few weeks is the Halloween Costume, found on my sewing blog under "warrior princess". I will be posting the modelled photos later today, so pop over through the photo of my sewing machine over there ----> to see the results. I am delighted with the outcome and have used many crafty skills to achieve them.



I will this weekend be dabbling in Nuno Felting. Something a couple of my knitting posse have learned to do and are willing to help the rest of us try. It should be a fun afternoon, with hopefully some cool results. Will post here the photos!


I will also be carving my annual pumpkin art. I usually post those photos here too, Happy Halloween to all!

As a last note, you all read about my charity auction sweater that I made a couple of weeks ago. It was going to a fundraiser night for a Nicaragua Mission where a group of women are going to teach locals to quilt in the hopes of creating better income and better lives, and also to take some supplies that are hard to get for them. I am delighted to announce that my sweater raised $180 and the whole night raised over $3000 for the trip. 100% of that goes to helping the women in Nicaragua. I am so proud of my friend Jane, who is going on this mission. (My knitting group is also going to help her refresh her knitting skills, so she can take yarn and needles and teach the women to knit too!)

2 comments:

  1. What an accomplishment!
    It's so nice to read of good being done.:0)
    You have the patience of Job knitting those big items.
    Lovely work you do too, I might add.
    It's taken me a month to finish the child sweater I'm making.
    Use to knock them out so much faster.
    My get up and go has got up and went. ;0)

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  2. Big chunky coats are only 75 stitches wide across the back and knit up very quickly on 7mm needles. Really takes as long as a baby sweater on 3.5mm needles!

    Thanks for the nice words about my projects! You are my greatest fan! Keep knitting!
    Chris

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